A group of high school students gather on the Isle of Skye’s remote Coral Beach for a hedonistic night of partying to celebrate the passing of their final exams. The new millennium is on the horizon and the future beckons, promising new hope and a fresh wind of optimism. In the coming days, many will leave the island for work or to study on the mainland, whereas others will remain on Skye and forge a more traditional path much as their families have done for centuries before them.

That is… all but one…

D.I. Duncan McAdam is dispatched home to the Misty Isle. A body has been found buried in a remote location on the Waternish peninsula. Well preserved in the peat, Isla Matheson – missing for the better part of two decades – is revealed to a shocked island community. A teenage runaway is dead… and no one is talking…

Joining a small team of detectives, Duncan is tasked with revisiting those who knew Isla, those who cared for her… and those with the potential to kill her… In a remote community well used to settling scores among themselves, will they trust one of their own when he asks questions or will they persevere with the façade of ignorance?

Kindle | 34 Chapters | 370 Pages | 2.5 Hours over 5 30min lunchbreaks

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

So, this book has been another lunchtime read. I ended up reading it over 5 lunchbreaks and really did feel like I was diving into another place while I was reading.

Despite not making any headway with the mass of paperbacks stacked opposite my bed, I can at least claim I am making headway with my kindle library [if we ignore the 3 books I just purchased…]

This book is a Scottish detective story set on the Isle of Skye. I enjoy reading Scottish crime novels, there is just an element to them that I find captivating. I also spent a lot of time on google maps getting acquainted with the region so I could better map things out in my head. The story centres around the discovery of a body of a girl who disappeared 20 years before. It sets out a premise with a lot of roots to follow. At the beginning it did feel like the roots were spreading wider than a tree could accommodate but it just left the door open for me to obsessively theorise.

D.I Duncan McAdam is a pleasing character. I have read other books where lack of information on the main character will irked me to the point of not reading. However, here the lack of personal knowledge of the character helped to give him a better start. Like leaving Glasgow and returning home was a clean slate for him and I think it allowed me to view the character without any preconceived judgement.

Once the body was discovered, Isla, there were many avenues I went down, both mentioned in the book and conjured by my own imagination. I could just see so many options for how it played out and I never once managed to stick strongly to any one theory. I didn’t guess the reveal but I also don’t think I was supposed to because everything had been so subtle and so well placed that although theories ran amok there was no ‘yellow brick road’ to follow.

Some people, even now, see islands and small settlements as backwards or ‘behind on the times’ and while I am sure that is true for a very small minority, the majority of people living in these areas are as current as anywhere else. However, I do think there is some truth in ‘family blood runs thicker’. I’m talking from a wide perspective, taking in experience, knowledge, film, book, tv etc. There are some groups of people who value family blood above all other to the point of ignoring trauma in the face of keeping the family together.

I mention this point because I could see a lot of this idea interworking with a lot of the aspects of the book and I also expected it to a certain extent. Family is important and most of us are willing to do almost anything for that family. It’s an interesting dynamic how the idea of family adapts and changes depending on where we are living.

Duncan for example clearly ran from Portree the moment he could and clearly hasn’t been back since. There is a lot to unpack in his character and we really only get a glimpse of it here but there are elements of his past that he clearly needs to face. His sister Roslyn stayed on the island and the difference between the siblings is something I found quite startling. Hopefully, as the series continues they manage to repair the bridges between each other and perhaps the family dynamic will grow fresh.

Aside from my deep spiral into family blood there, I found the overall plot of the book to be compelling and it was certainly something I thought about when I wasn’t actively reading it. There was quite a few unexpected funny and sarcastic bits also, which I enjoyed [and always enjoy in crime thrillers] as it adds a layer to what is going on with the plot. There is a good set up of second string characters who built up a good base in this book that will hopefully be developed over the course of the series.

Duncan McAdam’s is sort of a crossway character, except he is facing the crossway at the beginning of the series and not at the end. The way this book wrapped up I can see a multitude of paths facing Duncan so I am curious to see which one he will take and which direction the series will go in.

As I said, the reveal was a surprise for me as I hadn’t correctly guessed and as more unravelled it was thought provoking and lasting.

I highlighted one part, which stood out to me:

Duncan exhaled. “I don’t really know. Back in Glasgow, I’m…”

“About as popular as a floating turd in a swimming pool,” Alistair said.